


Leave

by heartswells



Series: Micro-Story Prompts [7]
Category: Hockey RPF, Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Internalized stigma, M/M, Mental Illness, Prompt: Undone, manic depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-17 07:50:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17556290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartswells/pseuds/heartswells
Summary: It all felt terribly, nauseatingly wrong. He had nothing to give Zach, yet he had everything necessary to take and to leech him to decimation and depletion.





	Leave

**Author's Note:**

> repost for personal reasons: I'm not entirely sure this conveyed the feelings I wished to coherently (rather, I think it didn't at all, and I really fucking hate this fic). What I wanted this fic to focus on was the stigma that declares its impossible to love if one has bipolar disorder, which is something I struggle with in my relationships. I ultimately found it incredibly difficult to actually talk about, and there was a lot more shame attached to it then I knew I had, so it really became too painful for me to spit out the words the way I wanted to. And I don't want to think about it anymore, so I'm just going to post this and move on.

It was as if his bones were splintering into shards and forcing their way into his blood stream, tearing little screaming mouths in his veins as they flowed. They splintered, they flowed, they pierced, and then they imbedded, decorating his heart like a pincushion. He felt it all like a dream, as if he was over-anesthetized, intellectually aware that his body was in pain yet numb to it all.

Zach was asleep, his breathing thrumming in the dim hotel like static. The bathroom door was cracked, and the abandoned light cast a sliver of gold across the room from between its crevices like an eerie smile. It was their first time together in months, and they hadn’t even fucked. Willy had said he didn’t want to, but he himself wasn’t even sure that was true. He wanted to be fucked; he didn’t want to be _touched_.

He felt as though his mind was filled with fluorescent lighting, like an empty hospital room at midnight, buzzing and flickering with its dizzying brightness, the bodies of old dead bugs scattered in the bulb. He felt surreally still, throbbing with apathy, caught in paralysis.

Zach slept soundly beside him, curled against the warmth of his side, satiated with his presence, and indulging in the love he thought they shared. Willy felt none of it. He felt like picking at the skin of his nailbeds. He felt like _leaving_.

It all felt terribly, nauseatingly wrong. He had nothing to give Zach, yet he had everything necessary to take and to leech him to decimation and depletion. He had everything necessary to hurt him and nothing necessary to heal him. He never should have tried to love. He’d promised he’d never do this, promised he’d never hurt anyone. He’d known he wasn’t capable of it—known that no one _like him_ was capable of love.

He was like sipping a glass of salt; he left people dying, spitting out salt while their heart rates plummeted and their heartbeats palpitated. He was cycling weeks of manic anger; of debilitating depression; of confusing chaos; of paranoia and fear; and of incoherent love. But surely, he wasn’t a person; surely, he wasn’t true.

He wanted to simply come undone, to let his body unravel into a spool of veins and nerves, spilling out the open doll carcass of his body. He wanted love to pour out of him like blood. He wanted to feel genuine, to feel capable. He wanted the echo in his body that shrieked that he was not capable of love to be let loose, to fly into the air and meet Zach’s ears and let it all end there.

He wanted Zach to hear him.

He wanted Zach to leave.

He wanted to know that he was capable of love.


End file.
